An intriguing report has emerged today that claims the CIA has turned to Amazon to help it build a private cloud. According to the report in Federal Computer Weekly, the spy agency has signed a massive, $600 million deal with the cloud computing company in order to secure its service for the next ten years.

FCW’s source claims that the CIA has asked Amazon to build it a private cloud infrastructure in order to help it “keep up with emerging technologies like Big Data in a cost-effective manner”, something that apparently isn’t possible under its current IT setup.

Unfortunately, given the nature of the CIA and Amazon’s own tendency towards secrecy, it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out if this story is true or not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not believable. On the contrary, it would actually make perfect sense for an organization like the CIA to adopt cloud architecture, given the global scale of its operations. There can be little doubt that one of the world’s biggest spy agencies amasses tons of Big Data and uses some of the most sophisticated analysis software around, and so shifting to the cloud would provide some big benefits. The CIA would be able to boost the efficiency of its data servers for one thing, and building and updating applications would also be far easier.

What’s more surprising is not the fact that the CIA wants to shift operations into the cloud, but the fact that it would choose Amazon to do so. Amazon Web Services has traditionally always been known as a public cloud provider rather than a private cloud service, and as such has always been a haven for start-ups and SMBs rather than enterprises and government agencies. And while Amazon might have signaled its intention to embrace private cloud in recent months, there remain many serious doubts over its security and reliability, as our contributing editor John Casaretto pointed out last month.

However, the CIA’s endorsement of Amazon – if the rumor is true – would seem to indicate that it’s security protocols are indeed up to scratch, at least when it comes to building private clouds, claims Stu Miniman, Senior Analyst at Wikibon.

“There is a high level of trust in what Amazon is doing, they feel that the software is secure and that’s a big deal,” insists Miniman.

But then again, perhaps the CIA is more concerned with simply cutting its costs. As FCW noted, several CIA officials have pointed to Amazon as a model for cost-effective data management in recent weeks. Moreover, during a gathering of Northern Virginia Technology Council board members just last week, the CIA’s Chief Information Office Jeanne Tisinger reportedly admitted that the agency  wants to take advantage of innovations in the IT sector to trim its costs and leverage SaaS.

What with the only alternatives being more expensive providers like Rackspace and IBM, or building its own private cloud infrastructure in house, it looks like the CIA has opted for the significant savings that Amazon would bring, though what this means for national security is anyone’s guess.